Call centers generally serve for carrying out different telecommunication tasks and are especially used by companies for offering their clients services such as advisory service, product help or sale. The present invention relates in particular to the administration of calls to so called inbound call centers which receive calls from clients in contrast to so called outbound call centers in which persons are called by call center agents, for example in order to win these persons as potential clients or for market research purposes.
Call centers can usually be reached under a particular service call number under which callers are connected to corresponding employees of the call center, so called call center agents. For the administration of the incoming calls, which in particular means the distribution of incoming calls to free call center agents, the forwarding to corresponding call center agents as well as the control or command of incoming calls until they are forwarded to a free call center agent, different systems or telephone installations are known in the state of the art. A substantial component of such systems or installations is a so called automatic call distribution (ACD; ACD: Automatic Call Distribution). This automatic call distribution holds incoming calls in a waiting queue comprising other calls waiting to be forwarded to a call center agent until they are forwarded to a call center agent. The calls are usually distributed or forwarded according to the so called FIFO principle (FIFO: First in-First out), i.e. incoming calls are forwarded to a free call center agent in succession according to their incoming time, wherein the call which has been received at first will be the first to be forwarded. Furthermore, the so called “longest-idle” principle is often applied, according to which a call to be forwarded from the waiting queue is forwarded to such call center agent whose last communication is dated back farthest.
However, the systems and methods for the operation of systems for the administration of calls to a call center which are known in the state of the art comprise disadvantages.
In particular for avoiding misuse of the service call numbers provided for reaching the call center by unserious calls which bind the call center agents unnecessarily and thus cause longer waiting times for the clients, calls to a call center are usually not free of charge. Since an incoming call usually cannot be immediately transferred to a call center agent and therefore has to be put in the waiting queue, as already mentioned, it is a problem that the caller is also charged for the waiting time he is spending in the waiting queue. Due to the charged costs, the callers evaluate or perceive corresponding waiting times as highly negative. For reducing the costs, it has been regulated by law in some countries (for example in Germany from the 1 Sep. 2012) that a caller may not be held for fees in a waiting loop. For technical reasons however, no waiting loops which are free of charge and which exceed 120 seconds can be realized at the moment in the common call number lanes of the German networks as well as in the mobile networks. Since it is usually impossible to assure that a call is forwarded to a call center agent or a call is received by a call center agent within 120 seconds, since this would lead to high staff costs, corresponding calls have to or would have to be ended by the system with the request to call again later. Since in such a case the caller's wish cannot be immediately dealt with, this will lead to a customer's dissatisfaction and a negative evaluation by the caller.
Systems or telephone installations known in the state of the art for the administration of calls to a call center solve this problem partially in that a caller can leave his call number and the caller will be called back when a free agent is available. As in particular the time distances between the call initiated by a caller and the ring back by a call center agent often comprise several hours, there are in particular the disadvantages that the ring back might no more reach the caller or another person than the caller answers the phone or the caller has already otherwise dealt with his wish. Since the call center agent is not available for other callers during such calls, these ring backs entail considerable costs for the call center or the company which operates the call center. Furthermore, it is more difficult to realize corresponding ring backs by the call center agents in a process.